by Tim Waggoner
TIM WAGGONER
new york
www.ibooksinc.com
An Original Publication of ibooks, inc.
Defender
™ and copyright © 2004 Midway Games, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
An ibooks, inc. Book
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CHAPTER
ONE
“Commander Kyoto, my sensors indicate that a squadron of Manti Landers is rapidly approaching from galactic north, along with a contingent of Baiters.”
For all the emotion in Memory’s synthesized voice, the AI might have been delivering a planetary weather report. But her sensors had a greater range than those of Kyoto’s ship, so even though the Defender’s holoscreen showed all clear, Kyoto knew to prepare for an attack.
“Here goes nothing.” Kyoto took a deep breath of recycled cockpit air, gripped the joystick, and accelerated away from the lunar surface—and from the installation that housed Memory’s physical form. The hum of the Defender’s fusion engines rose to a higher pitch, and Kyoto could feel the ship vibrate slightly as the inertial dampeners struggled to compensate. Going up against a Manti squadron alone wasn’t exactly the way to live to a ripe old age, but she had to do what she could to stall the Buggers—a slang term often used to describe the Manti—while Memory activated her launch sequence.
“How many kliks away, Memory?” Kyoto’s voice was strained, and despite the ship’s environmental controls, a line of sweat trickled down the back of her neck.
“Three hundred twelve and closing. Now if you’ll pardon me, Commander, I need to direct my full attention to launching. Even for a being of my vast intelligence—not to mention several dozen nuclear engines at my disposal—breaking a celestial body the size of Luna out of orbit isn’t going to be easy.”
Kyoto felt her stomach drop in a way it hadn’t since her very first training flight at the GSA Defender Academy on Titan. The only reason she’d survived this long was due to Memory’s help. Now, to go it totally alone…
“Acknowledged, Memory. Good luck to you.”
“And to you, Mei. Memory out.” There was a soft chirp as the comlink was broken.
Kyoto was surprised. This was the only time the AI had addressed her by her first name. But before she could decide what that meant, if anything, the Defender’s sensor alarms started pinging. Kyoto turned her attention to the ship’s holoscreen. The holo displayed a simulated image created from sensor data: a dozen shapes that looked like a cross between starships and gigantic hornets sped toward her, glowing with a green patina of energy that served as both life support and propulsion. Swirling around the Landers were several dozen smaller forms that looked something like crimson-hued biomechanical crabs: Baiters. Kyoto hated Baiters.
She powered up her pulse cannon and fast-lock missiles, momentarily wishing she were flying a Retribution-class starfighter, or even a Judgment. But her little Defender ship had gotten her this far. Now, if it could just keep her alive long enough for Memory to get the moon moving…
The ship bucked and shuddered as something large slammed into it. Alarms shrieked a collision warning, but it was too late. Sensors indicated that whatever had hit her was holding fast to the ship’s outer hull. Kyoto attempted to activate the Defender’s energy shield, but nothing happened. The system must have been damaged by the impact.
Just as Kyoto was about to go into a roll in an attempt to shake off her unwanted passenger, a green claw punched through the starfighter’s hull and sliced into her shoulder.
She screamed, both from the pain of her injury and from the knowledge that given the damage to the ship, explosive decompression was only microseconds away.
Damn it! She’d been so close!
And then the claw tore a larger hole in the ship, but despite this, the explosion that Kyoto feared—and which should have been a scientific inevitability—didn’t occur. Instead, the Manti reached for her with its insectine appendages and plucked her from the pilot’s seat. The Lander pulled her into space and retreated with its prize as the Defender soared on pilotless toward the Manti squadron.
Kyoto blew out her breath and kept her mouth open to prevent decompression, but she knew it didn’t matter. She’d been captured by a Lander; she was as good as dead.
She reached for her sidearm, hoping to at least take out the Bugger before it could absorb her genetic material, but she wasn’t fast enough. The Lander plunged its spiny bioprobes into the soft flesh of her neck and started injecting the enzymes that would prepare her body for absorption. The pain was beyond anything Kyoto had ever imagined, let alone experienced, and despite herself, she took a deep breath and screamed. Somehow the sound of her agony echoed strong and clear though the vacuum of space, until it was finally cut off by her death.
Kyoto woke to darkness, and at first she thought she really was dead. But then she remembered: she’d been absorbed by a Lander and turned into a Mutant. But that didn’t make any sense—she didn’t feel like a Mutant. Not that she was exactly sure what being one was supposed to feel like.
“Lights,” she mumbled, and then cursed as harsh illumination stabbed her eyes. “Dim to half strength!” The roomcomp adjusted the lighting level accordingly, and Kyoto was able to open her eyes without feeling as if she were staring into the heart of a nuclear furnace.
She sat up and sighed in relief. It had been, as the cliché went, all a dream. But not entirely. Everything had happened just as it had occurred in reality, up to the point where the Lander had breached her ship. She should’ve known she was dreaming when the laws of physics suddenly had ceased to apply. But then, that was the way of dreams, wasn’t it? You never knew you were having one until it was over.
Kyoto drew her knees to her chest and hugged them. Her pulse was racing, so she did some deep breathing exercises until it returned to normal. What she would have liked to do was roll over and cuddle with Wolf, but that was a little difficult, seeing as how he’d broken up with her three days ago.
Great. Now she wasn’t scared anymore—she was depressed.
“Time?”
“January 4th, 2653, four fifty-seven a.m., colony standard time.” The reply came from a small speaker set into the ceiling. The voice was feminine—comp designers had long known that both men and women preferred their systems to speak with female voices. They supposedly found them more pleasant and soothing. But not Kyoto. This particular voice always set her teeth on edge, especially after Memory’s sacrifice. She’d have to see what she could do about having her quarters’ voice-synth reprogrammed.
“You’re booked for an appearance on Cyndonia Today at nine A.M. Do you wish to sleep longer? I can play a variety of soothing music or natural sounds to help you relax. And I’d be happy to infuse the air with a pleasing scent. As I recall, you’re especially fond of jasmine.”
Kyoto groaned at the AI’s reminder. She hated doing media appearances, and she especially hated Cydonia Today. “Don’t bother. I’m wide awake now.”
Kyoto threw off her sheets and padded naked across the carpeted floor to the bathroom. She didn’t have far to go. Galactic Stargate Authority living quarters were hardly palatial—bedroom, bathroom, living area, kitchen, none of them very large. The bedroom was so small that Wolf used to joke that he could roll over and go to the bathroom without getting
out of bed.
But that was colony life. Conservation of resources, including living space, was the key to survival. Kyoto had seen numerous vids of old Earth, but of all the things that impressed her—the blue sky, the lush plant growth, the oceans, the animals—she’d always found the sheer amount of habitable living space on the planet to be staggering. Try as she might, she couldn’t quite imagine what it would be like to live in a place where you weren’t always enclosed within the smallest area possible, a place where you could run more than a few feet without slamming into a wall, where you could see for long distances without needing to have the view re-created on a holoscreen, or being cut off from the world by a thick plasteel window. A place where you could lie down on the grass, look up at the sky, and breathe air that had never been processed or purified. Sometimes it seemed impossible to her that humans had ever truly lived like that. Other times, it seemed inconceivable to her they could live any other way.
She took her time in the bathroom, lingering in the chem shower, trying not to think about Memory, her dream, or Philip Wolfenson and just how damn much she missed him.
CHAPTER
TWO
“Good morning, Colonists. I’m Aspen DeFonesca, and this is Cydonia Today.” The beautiful blonde flashed a million-erg smile as the program’s theme music filled the tiny studio. The room was featureless, save for the two chairs that Aspen and Kyoto occupied. The backdrop of the Martian city of Cydonia would be virtually generated for the audience as their images were transmitted over Syscom.
The music faded out and Aspen’s expression became serious. “Today is of course Remembrance Day, the anniversary of both the defeat of our race’s greatest enemy and the loss of our ancestral homeworld. My guest this morning is the woman whom some have hailed as humanity’s savior: Elite Commander Mei Kyoto of the Galactic Stargate Authority.”
Kyoto smiled at the vidcam hovering in front of her and tried not to shift in her seat, although her dress uniform was a bit snug around her waist and the collar made her neck itch. Cydonia Today was the top-rated infotainment show in the Solar Colonies, which meant that over a billion people were looking at her right now. The last thing they needed to see was the GSA’s most famous officer squirm uncomfortably in her seat, like a child that couldn’t stand to be wearing grown-up clothes. She didn’t want to think what General Adams would say to her later.
Aspen turned to look at her, dazzling smile once more firmly in place. The woman was either blessed with almost perfect genetics or—and this was Kyoto’s belief—she’d been the recipient of some serious cosmetic surgery somewhere along the line. She was stunning: perfect hair, blue eyes, full lips, high cheekbones, large breasts, trim waist. Next to her, Kyoto looked like a boy, and a not particularly attractive one at that.
“Good morning, Elite Commander. I’m sure you have a full agenda today, and we appreciate your taking the time to be with us.”
“My pleasure, Aspen.” Kyoto hoped she sounded sincere. If she’d had a choice, she’d rather pilot a starfighter into the heart of a supernova than sit here gabbing with the Colonies’ most irritating media personality. But then again, perhaps Kyoto was resentful of the woman’s extreme beauty—not to mention that she’d played the part of Kyoto in the ludicrously titled Deathship, the awful vid based on the Battle of Luna. Aspen was a mediocre actress at best, and to top it all off, she didn’t look a thing like Kyoto. If she had any Asian ancestry in her genetic background at all, her cosmetic “enhancements” covered it up well.
“First, let me say how good you look in your dress uniform. Black suits you.”
Kyoto gritted her teeth. “All GSA personnel will be wearing their dress uniforms to mark today’s occasion.”
“Of course they will. But none of them are as well known as you are. Two years ago, women throughout the Solar Colonies copied your trademark look by donning faux flightsuits and retro bomber jackets. Très kitschy, no?”
“That was my father’s jacket.” Easy, Kyoto, she cautioned herself. Maintain a steady course. But though she tried to hold back the words, they came out anyway. “My parents ran cargo among the Saturn moon colonies. Their ship was really the only home I ever knew. One day we were just about to make a jump from Titan to Rhea when our ship was attacked by a squadron of Manti Landers. My father tried to get us away, but our ship didn’t have much in the way of armaments or speed. We took some heavy hits from the Landers and crash-landed on Titan’s surface. The impact killed both my mother and my brother, but my father and I survived, though we were both badly wounded. My father got a vacc suit on me, put one on himself, and then carried me out of the wreckage. I remember it was so cold, and the thick atmosphere made it hard to see. But the Manti didn’t have any trouble finding us. A Lander…”
She took a deep breath and forced herself to go on despite Aspen’s wide-eyed, almost panicky stare. “A Lander grabbed hold of my father and began to absorb him. But before the Bugger could succeed, it was destroyed by weapons fire. I looked up and saw a starfighter fly by. The pilot dipped her wings to let me know she’d seen me, and then she proceeded to take out the rest of the Manti squadron. When she was finished, she flew by again, only this time she picked me up and took me to the closest Dropzone, where I was given medical treatment. Later, a GSA tank crew recovered my family’s frozen bodies. There wasn’t much left of my father, but his favorite bomber jacket was still intact.” She shrugged. “I guess Manti don’t like the taste of pseudoleather. I’ve worn my father’s jacket to honor his memory ever since—during my time growing up in the refugee camps on Rhea and when I enrolled in the Defender Academy. So you can understand why I would hardly describe my jacket as ‘kitschy.’ ”
When she was finished, Kyoto felt better, even though she knew she’d gone too far. Still, Aspen had deserved it for that remark.
Aspen looked at Kyoto for a moment, then slowly and very deliberately smiled. “Do you think that after today there’ll be a similar trend toward black uniforms?”
Kyoto sighed. She should have known that Aspen DeFonesca would never let herself be upstaged by a guest. “Honestly, I hope not. I’m proud to have earned the right to wear the uniform of a GSA officer. It’s not simply a costume one can—”
“Of course it isn’t.” Aspen smiled tolerantly, as if she were indulging a talkative child. “Let’s chat a little about today, shall we? While there are going to be numerous ceremonies to mark this second Remembrance Day, perhaps none is going to be watched as closely as the activation of the Earth Memorial.”
“That’s right. It’ll happen at precisely noon, CST.” If all goes well, she added mentally.
“The memorial isn’t without its share of controversy, though, is it? Not everyone thinks that a holographic recreation of Earth and its moon is in the best taste. Especially since they’re only going to be one-fortieth the size of the originals. Any thoughts?”
“All the proposed designs were available for colonists to view and vote on through Syscom’s infonet. In the end, the council tallied the votes and the holographic recreation won. As for the size, given the limits of our technology, it was the best we could do. And even at one-fortieth scale, that still comes to about a thousand-kilometer circumference for the Earth holo, and close to three hundred for the moon.”
“Yes, but what I’m really after here is what do you, Mei Kyoto, think of the memorial?” She gave Kyoto a we’re-best-girlfriends-aren’t-we? smile. “Don’t hold back now.”
In Kyoto’s mind, she once again saw an image of the moon moving inexorably toward Earth, while swarms of Manti streaked toward the satellite in a vain attempt to stop it.
“The purpose of a memorial is to help us remember, right? In that case, the holograms will do their job, despite whatever shortcomings they might have.” At one time such a diplomatic answer would have been beyond Kyoto, but she’d had a lot of practice at diplomacy serving as the GSA’s public face during the last two years.
Aspen’s smile dimmed by a few hu
ndred watts, though it didn’t go out entirely. Kyoto knew the woman prided herself on being able to make a personal connection with the people she interviewed, on getting them to, as she put it, “dish the dishiest dish.” But Kyoto was here as an official representative of the GSA. Besides, she wasn’t a dishy kind of gal.
A sly look came over Aspen’s face then. “From what I understand, Commander First Class Philip Wolfenson—called Wolf by his closest friends—is going to be one of the fighter pilots providing security for the Orinoco as its crew completes the activation of the memorial today.”
Kyoto felt as if she’d just taken a blow to her solar plexus. “That’s right.”
Aspen’s eyes narrowed like a predator that had sensed weakness in its prey. “It’s not a secret that the two of you have been a couple for almost a year now. In fact, one of my spies reports that there’s been some talk of marriage. Care to comment, Elite Commander?” Aspen bared her teeth in a way that possessed only the most superficial resemblance to a smile.
Kyoto held her breath. Her cheeks felt hot, and she knew she was blushing. She could tell by the look on Aspen’s too-perfect face that the woman knew Wolf had broken up with her, and that the morning-show host had raised the topic of her romantic life in order to punish Kyoto for not being a more forthcoming guest. The question was just how far Aspen was willing to take this.
“I don’t think marriage is in the cards for us right now, Aspen. However, I wish Commander Wolfenson the best of luck in his role during this historic mission. And the same goes for the rest of the Orinoco’s crew.”
Aspen looked at her for a long moment before inclining her head in the slightest of nods, as if to say, Well played.
“Yet another of my spies tells me that the Council of Seven intends to make a special announcement a half hour before the memorial goes online. I don’t suppose you might be able to give us a hint as to what it might be?”
